The Journey to ‘Yes’ Began Then

*WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine*

After months of speculation, theorizing, rumors, and educated wishing, Deadpool & Wolverine is finally in cinemas, its multiversal madness laid bare for all to see. If the prospect of Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds getting their mutant team-up on in the MCU didn’t already have us frothing at the mouth before we saw the movie (which it very much did!), then we’re still excited to have witnessed the slew of insane cameos that wound up in the film. There is a spoiler warning up top here, but *SPOILER WARNING* again folks because seriously, who’d’ve thunk we’d ever see Wesley Snipes’ Blade, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm, or Dafne Keen’s Laura/X-23 on our screens ever again? Or that we’d ever see Channing Tatum’s ill-fated Gambit at all, period? We sure didn’t. And for a good while, neither did the movie’s star-and-director duo Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy, as we learned during our in-depth, 45-minute spoilerific interview with the pair for the Empire Podcast Deadpool & Wolverine Spoiler Special (which has just dropped!)

Whilst discussing the decision to bring Keen’s Laura — first seen in James Mangold’s 2017 Wolverine send-off Logan — back for Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds revealed that although he and Levy had no qualms about bringing X-23 into the MCU, they ran into a stone wall with Marvel Studios. “The answer was no from Marvel,” shares Reynolds, “the answer was no for so many things.” But as Reynolds explains, this wasn’t a case of corporate gatekeeping from Kevin Feige and co, whom he describes as “the best creative partners.” “For some time, the problem was rights stuff that we could never quite figure out. So like even the title, which was Deadpool And Friend, that wasn’t because we were trying to be cute — it’s that that we weren’t allowed to say Wolverine in the title.”

As Levy goes on to tell Empire, among the “hard no’s” from Marvel were Laura, that Deadpool & Wolverine title, Tatum’s Gambit, and Wesley Snipes’ Blade. “We still don’t know how no’s turned into yeses,” confesses Levy — but once Marvel had given the green light, Reynolds and Levy got to work. Evans was all in on a reprisal of his Fantastic Four (2005) Human Torch from the get-go (“It was a text and a yes”); Tatum — who appeared on stage with Reynolds at Comic-Con in 2015 before his Gambit solo movie’s cancellation — relished a chance to finally play the X-Men’s Ragin’ Cajun (“I’ve never seen a more joyous actor on a set,” says Levy); and Snipes, whose Blade was tangled up in a New Line rights rigmarole when Reynolds came a-calling, overcame some early-doors trepidation to bring his iconic Daywalker back to life in style. Of Snipes’ return in particular, Blade Trinity co-star Reynolds says seeing Blade’s MCU entrance — complete with growling lion! — in a packed cinema ranks as “one of the best moments of my life.” And honestly, fair enough actually!